You think you're busy? R. Buckminster Fuller (1895-1983) or "Bucky," as he was called, is best known as the inventor of the geodesic dome. But he was also an architect, lecturer, engineer, mathematician, poet, thinker, futurist, cartographer, and cosmologist. Fuller wrote 28 books, was awarded 25 patents, and he was an early proponent of renewable energy sources: solar, wind, and wave.

The Buckminster Fuller Institute, which relocated a decade ago from California to Williamsburg, expands on Fuller's legacy by encouraging participants in their programs "to conceive and apply transformative strategies based on a crucial synthesis of whole systems thinking, Nature's fundamental principles, and an ethically driven worldview." Got that?

Upcoming BFI events include Bucky and Cosmopoetics at NYU on Friday, March 7 and symposia on April 4 and 17 with the Cooper Union Institute for Sustainable Design.

Isamu Noguchi and RBF were friends and you can see the bust that Noguchi did of Fuller at the Noguchi Museum.

Two local geodesic domes: The aviary at the Queens Zoo, designed by Fuller for the '64 World's Fair [photo: Joe Shlabotnik], and the New Year's Eve Times Square ball.